Between the end of March and June 2020, COVID-19 quickly spread in Mexico. As a response, the Mexican government announced its national prevention campaign, called ‘Susana Distancia,’ a set of measures, recommendations, conferences, educational resources, and a chatbot. At the centre of the campaign was Susana Distancia’s character, a young woman designed in a comic-book-style, echoing the Mexican lucha libre heroes, who recommended keeping 1.5 m (6 feet) of physical distance to prevent contagion. In the following visual essay, we analyse Susana Distancia’s role, from its institutional origins to its later transformation as a popular culture meme. Based on the Latin American theory of the popular, we argue that the Susana Distancia, as a meme, used various mechanisms to support and challenge the institutional discourse. In this sense, Susana Distancia can be considered a meme that embraces the popular: a cultural artefact that travels across different languages, spaces, and rituals, from cyberspace to the streets, from governmental intentions to everyday performativity. When we use lo popular as a category, we refer to the possibility of enacting subaltern narratives in aesthetic and ethical terms. Multiple readings and manifestations of Susana Distancia demonstrate popular culture as a means of travelling through diverse semantic appropriations. Various forms of popular culture: the politised, the artistic, the erotic, the authentic, the mainstream, and the political, converge in the translation of meaning, from the institutional discourse to the lived experiences of the Mexican population.

2020 年 3 月底至 6 月期间，COVID-19 在墨西哥迅速传播。作为回应，墨西哥政府宣布了名为“Susana Distancia”的全国预防运动，其中包括一系列措施、建议、会议、教育资源和聊天机器人。此次活动的中心人物是苏珊娜·迪斯坦西亚 (Susana Distancia) 的角色，她是一位采用漫画风格设计的年轻女性，与墨西哥自由摔跤运动相呼应英雄们建议保持 1.5 m（6 英尺）的物理距离以防止传染。在下面的视觉文章中，我们分析了苏珊娜·迪斯坦西亚（Susana Distancia）的角色，从其制度起源到后来转变为流行文化模因。基于拉丁美洲的流行理论，我们认为苏珊娜·迪斯坦西亚作为一种模因，利用各种机制来支持和挑战制度话语。从这个意义上说，苏珊娜·距离可以被认为是一个拥抱流行的模因：一种跨越不同语言、空间和仪式、从网络空间到街道、从政府意图到日常表演的文化艺术品。当我们使用lo流行时作为一个类别，我们指的是从美学和伦理角度进行底层叙事的可能性。对苏珊娜·迪斯坦西亚的多次解读和表现表明，流行文化是一种穿越不同语义挪用的手段。各种形式的流行文化：政治化的、艺术性的、情色性的、真实性的、主流的和政治性的，在从制度话语到墨西哥人民的生活经历的意义翻译中汇聚在一起。